This week, the LGBT Center launched its participation in the I’ll Go With You campaign. In honor of this effort, as well as Trans Women Day of Visibility on March 15, we would like to share delfin bautista’s reflection shared at Trans Day of Remembrance from November 2016.
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Many thanks to all for your presence here tonight and to all who are not able to be here in person, but are with us in solidarity. On behalf of the LGBT Center, I welcome all of you to our vigil of remembrance and of resilience.
"The Transgender Day of Remembrance was started by transgender advocate Gwendolyn Ann Smith as a vigil to honor the memory of Rita Hester, a transgender woman who was killed in 1998. The vigil commemorated all the transgender people lost to violence that year and began an important memorial that has become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance." Gwendolyn Ann reflects … "The Transgender Day of Remembrance seeks to highlight the losses we face due to anti-transgender bigotry and violence. I am no stranger to the need to fight for our rights, and the right to simply exist is first and foremost. With so many seeking to erase transgender people —sometimes in the most brutal ways possible — it is vitally important that those we lose are remembered, and that we continue to fight for justice (information found on GLAAD's website)."
Transgender Day of Remembrance and many have added "resilience" to the name, serves as a way of honoring those who have been silenced, and those who have died, as a way of challenging and empowering communities around the world to end the hatred and ignorance that those of who us who are trans experience on a daily basis. Trans Day of Remembrance and Resilience has been observed in over 200 cities throughout more than 20 countries.
Tonight we gather at a time of much uncertainty, fear, confusion and WTF-ness. We also gather with sparks of determination, sass and zealousness that as we mourn for those who died, we will fight like hell for those who are living until the violence ends.
For many of us within the Latinx communities, we believe that all who have lived before us continue to journey with us today. We proclaim this conviction with the word “presente!” Tonight, all those who have been silenced through violence are presente! They hold us, journey with us, are in solidarity with us…presente now and presente always.
We remember tonight people like Joan of Arc, Freddy Martinez, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P Johnson, Gwen Arujo, Pauli Murray and Leslie Feinberg … We remember all those who challenged society’s comfort of the binary … folks who lived and loved boldly beyond the norm. We honor these witnesses who created a path for us today to simply be.
Tonight, presente, are the trans people murdered in the United States and those who died by suicide … We remember.
1) Monica Loera, 43, a Latina transgender woman from North Austin, Texas, was fatally shot Jan. 22, following an argument outside her home. A suspect, Jon Casey Rowell, has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
2) Jasmine Sierra, a Latina transgender woman from Bakersfield, California, was found dead on Jan. 22. Her body showed signs of trauma, but a cause of death has yet to be determined, and no suspects have been identified.
3) Maya Young, 25, a black transgender woman from Frankford, Pennsylvania, was fatally stabbed on Feb. 21. A female suspect has been arrested and more arrests are expected.
4) Demarkis Stansberry, 30, a black transgender man from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was fatally shot on Feb. 28. An acquaintance, Nicholas Mathews has confessed to shooting Stansberry and has been arrested and charged with negligent homicide.
5) Kendarie Johnson, 16, a black gender fluid youth from Burlington, Iowa, was fatally shot on March 2. The killing is still under investigation, and no suspects have been arrested.
6) Quartney Davia Dawsonn-Yochum, 32, a transgender woman of color, was fatally shot March 23 outside her Los Angeles apartment complex in what appears to be a dispute with her former boyfriend.
7) Shante Thompson, 34, a black transgender woman from Houston, Texas, was beaten and shot to death by a group of assailants on April 11. The group also killed a man walking with Thompson. Twenty-three-year-old Tariq Lackings has been arrested and charged with capital murder.
8) Keyonna Blakeney, 22, a black transgender woman from Montgomery County, Maryland, was killed April 16. Police have not yet identified any suspects and have only said that she suffered "trauma to her upper body."
9) Reecey Walker, 32, a black transgender woman from Wichita, Kansas, was fatally stabbed May 1. A 16-year-old boy has been arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
10) Mercedes Successful, 32, a black transgender woman from Haines City, Florida, was fatally shot May 15. Police have not identified a suspect.
11) Amos Beede, 38, a transgender man, succumbed to his injuries after he was attacked at a homeless encampment in Vermont. An investigation into the attack is ongoing.
12) Goddess Diamond, 20, of New Orleans, was found dead of blunt force trauma in a burned car on June 5. No suspects have been identified.
13) Deeniquia Dodds, 22, a transgender woman, was critically shot on July 4 in Northeast Washington, D.C. She passed away on July 13 after 10 days on life support. On Sept. 15, police arrested a man in connection to Dobbs's murder.
14) Dee Whigham, 23, a Black transgender woman, was killed on July 23 in St. Martin, Mississippi. Dee was a registered nurse at a hospital in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. During a court hearing in September, a sheriff’s deputy revealed that Dee was stabbed a 119 times.
15) Erykah Tijerina, 36, a transgender woman, was found dead in her El Paso, Texas, apartment on August 8. Twenty-one-year-old Anthony Bowden was arrested and charged for murder on Sept. 13, 2016.
16) Rae’Lynn Thomas, 28, a transgender woman from Columbus, Ohio, was brutally murdered the week of Aug. 8. Thomas’s family reports witnessing her death at the hands of James Allen Byrd, an ex-boyfriend of Thomas’s mother who lived in the family home.
17) T.T., 26 or 27, a Black transgender woman who was found murdered in Chicago’s Garfield Park on Sept. 11. Reports say she was well-known in Chicago’s transgender community; her friends recalled T.T. as a “lovely” and “happy, cheerful” person who was always laughing.
18) Crystal Edmonds, 32, a Black transgender woman, died after being fatally shot on Sept. 16 in Baltimore.
19) Jazz Alford, 30, a Black transgender woman, was found shot to death in a Birmingham, Alabama, motel on Sept. 23.
20) Brandi Bledsoe, 32, was found dead in Cleveland, Ohio, on Oct. 9. Bledsoe was an artist and worked at Home Depot. Authorities believe her death was likely the result of foul play.
21) Noon Norwood, a Black transgender woman who was shot near her home in Richmond, Virginia, and died the next day. Police are looking for a man who may have been nearby at the time of the shooting.
22) On Feb. 4, 24-year-old Kayden Clarke, a transgender man from Arizona, was shot and killed by police in his home, after they responded to a call that Kayden was threatening suicide and had a knife.
23) The body of Nino Acox Jackson of Dallas was found in a lake on Feb. 16.
24) Veronica Banks Cano of San Antonio was found dead in a bathtub on Feb. 19.
25) Skye Mockabee, who passed away in Cleveland in July, was originally thought to be a victim of violence; authorities now believe her death was an accident.
Presente with us are all those people whose stories will remain unknown, whose faces are anonymous, whose lives may or may not be a statistic. Presente are all who struggle in the silences of the closet, who cannot share who they are out of fear, dysphoria and societal imposed shame. All these people are presente.
Despite rejection, violence and attempts to eliminate our personhood, bodies, narratives and experiences, trans people are refusing to be silenced and erased. Not only have we survived, we have thrived and continue to do so in transgressive and transformative ways.
There is a lot of focus on the hardships experienced by trans people; these realities are important to lift up but often overpower the conversation and overshadow the reality that we as a community are badasses who embody revolutionary sass every day. Queer Chicana feminist and poet Gloria Anzaldua once said … “I am an act of kneading, of uniting and joining that not only has produced both a creature of darkness and a creature of light, but also a creature that questions the definitions of light and dark and gives them new meanings.” This is what we do every day … we shift the narrative in society by making it known that trans people are here, have always been here, and will always be here.
We honor tonight queer heroes and sheroes and •theyroes like Jasper, Anna, Rae, Elliot, Chris, Lynn, Jasper, Theo, Marrek, Ramona, Samuel, Tiffany and the many Bobcats we don’t know … everyday embodying with grace and sass the challenge to live, love and laugh within and beyond binaries. All of these lives, spirits, ancestors, possibility models, witnesses … all are presente.
Tonight … We honor our transgressive and transformative resilience as a community so that the lives lost are not lost in vain — our resilience reflects that we are not victims but we are survivors … More specifically we are thrivers.
At a time where there is much eek within our community, we don’t need allies … we need accomplices, folks willing to get down and dirty with us … folks who will get down and dirty when we can’t anymore … folks who will continue the gender revolution when we are no longer here.
I close with the words of Lourdes Ashley Hunter: “Solidarity with the Trans Community is not a retweet, like or Facebook share. Solidarity is informed, intentional, re-occurring, sustainable acts of service. We must realize that violence against trans women or against any person in our community is violence against us all. We are fighting every day simply to breathe, to exist … when I say that every breath a [trans person] takes is an act of revolution I mean that with my whole heart because every day we wake up in a world designed to erase us off the face of the earth.”
Muchas gracias. Que asi sea.
Send your questions: via email to lgbt@ohio.edu and/or oulgbtcenter@gmail.com and/or therainbowroomou@gmail.com; via Tumblr (oulgbtcenter); via Twitter to @oulgbtcenter with hashtag #qaqueer; or post/message to Facebook (oulgbtcenter).
So bring it on, do it to it, and query a queer.
delfin is the director of the LGBT Center, faculty advisor to the Hispanic and Latino Student Union and Queers United In Protest, and adjunct lecturer for women’s, gender, and sexuality studies.
